Flexible Collaboration Transparency

Abstract

This paper presents two distinct contributions: First, we present a critique of collaboration transparency as it is currently implemented in contrast to collaboration-aware implementations. We find conventional collaboration-transparency systems lacking in terms of efficient use of network resources and support for key groupware principles: concurrent work, relaxed WYSIWIS, and group awareness. Second, we examine the causes of these deficiencies, and then present an alternative implementation approach based on an object-oriented replicated architecture where selected single-user interface objects are dynamically replaced by multi-user extensions. The replacement is transparent to the single-user application and its developer. As an instance of this approach, we described its incorporation into a Java-based collaboration-transparency system, called JAMM.